The present invention relates generally to printed paper novelty items of various types and more particularly to a specialty paper product wherein a "pop-up" is provided that, upon opening of the product, moves upward and out of the plane of the cover panels and is seen against one of the panels.
Advertising leaflets, inserts, mailers, novelty items, and the like have for many years utilized pop-up devices which, upon opening of the pages of a folder, move out of the plane in which they lie into a raised position in a central location between the two pages of the folder. Articles of this nature have been used to promote a particular product or service and are often used together with accompanying text in order to illustrate a particular theme or incident in a story. Although the value of such an item as an illustration is obvious, in an advertising or a promotional item, the value lies in its ability to attract attention and influence remembrance of the recipient whose business the pop-up is designed to attract. Accordingly, commercially practical items of this general type which incorporate attention-getting features remain in demand, along with ways for mass producing such items so as to make distribution economically feasible.
Because of their attention-getting raising action, pop-ups are being used with greater frequency in magazines and the like. The pop-up inserts, when used in a magazine, are bound along the magazine's binding edge with the pop-up pages opening in the same direction as the magazine pages. Due to the bulk of the magazine pages, the left hand pages of the magazine develop a curvature as it is opened. This is a normal curvature and is not objectionable if one is merely reading the page, but this curving is detrimental to those pop-ups which erect across this center fold, or "gutter". As the left hand page, or front cover, of the pop-up curls, the pop-up refuses to erect because the fold along the base of the pop-up is not straight.
To overcome the left-hand page curling, a binding strip is often incorporated into pop-up pages. First, it moves the "gutter" away from the magazine binding edge which eases the problem somewhat. Second, it allows the inserts to be bound into books Which are "perfection" bound, which is a method whereby all the pages are simply jogged or bunched into an even stack, the binding edge is then sanded under pressure, glue is applied and the entire magazine is glued together page by page at this binding edge. A cover is then "wrapped around" these pages and the entire magazine is trimmed along the top, bottom and outer edges.
Across-the-gutter type pop-ups have an additional disadvantage. The display of the across-the-gutter type pop-ups is shown against or on top of the two facing pages. This can be somewhat awkward to a reader normally accustomed to looking at either the left or the right page when reading a magazine or similar item. A pop-up displayed against the left or the right hand page will appear to be more natural to the reader and, accordingly, will be given greater consideration than those appearing across the centerfold of the magazine.
As opposed to a single-display pop-up, some pop-ups utilize two pop-up display elements, that is, one pop-up display element placed on top of the other pop-up display element thus producing an effect of a foreground and a background to the display. The added weight of the additional display element further aggravates the curling effect of the opening of the left hand page and additionally hampers the across-the-gutter type pop-up's raising action.
Finally, pop-ups in the prior art which utilize two display elements use, as an erection means, the turning of the left hand page, or front cover, to lift the top, or foreground, pop-up display element away from the bottom, or background, pop-up display element and the right hand page, or back cover. This is accomplished because the foreground display element is attached to the front cover. The foreground display element then, in turn, lifts the background display element away from the back cover via an attachment means, i.e., glue, tape, staples, etc. The most popular attachment means for the paper pop-up devices is the use of glue or cement because of their ease of application, low cost, and adhesive properties. The two pop-up elements are restrained from rotating a full one-hundred eighty degrees with the front cover and allowed to remain parallel to the back cover plane, its intended position, by another attachment, connected between the back cover and the background display element.
The attachment between the foreground and background display elements has been accomplished by gluing a spacer therebetween but this presents a number of problems. It complicates the gluing process by adding an additional surface upon which the glue must be applied (if glue is used, as is most likely). This slows the gluing and thus the manufacturing process. It also possibly reduces the gluing process to a manual application instead of an automatic application. This would naturally increase the cost of such devices.
The present invention is designed to overcome the limitations that are attendant upon the use of traditional pop-up devices, and, toward this end, it contemplates the provision of a novel pop-up device which is capable of fabrication by mechanical mass-production and which works well as a magazine insert.
It is an object of the invention to provide a pop-up device which utilizes a foreground and a background display which is visible on one page only and does not require a binding strip due to left page curvature but may utilize one if desired.
It is also an object to provide such a device whose foreground and background display elements are not attached to each other which thereby simplifies the pop-up's manufacturing process.
A further object is to provide such a device which may be readily and economically fabricated and will enjoy a long life in operation.